


You Belong Among the Stars

by Dracoduceus



Series: You Belong Among the Stars [1]
Category: Among Us (Video Game), Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Background Character Death, M/M, Space Gays, canon-typical discussion of death (but nothing explicit)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:02:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28142079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dracoduceus/pseuds/Dracoduceus
Summary: At the Edge, there are alien creatures known as Imposters kill humans and take their place among the crew. It is rare to survive such attacks, but Hanzo and McCree both have the dubious honor of doing so. Their shared experiences bring them together as they both try to move on from such tragedies.And then, on Mira, it happened again. This time they have each other; but for how long?
Relationships: Jesse McCree/Hanzo Shimada
Series: You Belong Among the Stars [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2061636
Comments: 3
Kudos: 50





	You Belong Among the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of the very few pieces that I intend to post from the [seasonal package](https://twitter.com/ichigowhiskey/status/1339344509369540609?s=20) that [IchigoWhiskey](https://twitter.com/ichigowhiskey), [WereKem](https://twitter.com/WereKem), and I worked on this year. 
> 
> It was one of those ideas that just kind of snowballed. I had jokingly thought to myself "what would this look like if I forced these two together" and slowly everything fell into place.

_ He remembered footsteps. _

_ Heavy boots ran back and forth in front of him. There was silence except for the sound of those boots. _

_ Back. _

_ And forth. _

_ The sound of a metal grate, another set of footsteps; a snap. _

_ He hid beneath the table, behind a box of assorted supplies, and shook. _

_ There was no scream when they found the body, no sound, no voice; just more footsteps. Someone must have turned on the lights because he could see it over the box in front of him. The body looked like a puppet whose strings had been cut, their limbs splayed. _

_ Their visor was red. _

_ Everyone left and he ducked behind the box again. _

_ It happened again. _

_ Boots thumping. _

_ A snap, the crash of a body. _

_ The sound of a metal grate. _

_ More boots, the sound of them dragging the body away. _

_ Then he heard a low hissing, a wet sound. Suddenly, there was a terrible noise, a wild shriek of triumph and hunger. He clutched his helmet in his thick gloves and squeezed his eyes shut. _

_ The box moved suddenly, and something pulled him out from his hiding spot. He screamed but nobody could hear him. _

* * *

He sat up in his bed, gasping for breath. Immediately, he rolled over and found his comm device but he paused, hesitating over the chat function. Surely it was late—03:45, or so the clock said—but Hanzo had said  _ anytime _ .

_ Bad dreams, _ he typed.

A moment later Hanzo responded,  _ Me too. _

Falling back, McCree sighed in relief. He hadn’t woken Hanzo up.

The device buzzed.  _ Yours? _

_ When Reyes rescued me _ , he typed.  _ Footsteps. You? _

A longer pause.  _ Genji, _ Hanzo said simply.

McCree sighed. While he had been rescued from the infamous  _ Skeld _ as a child, the rest of the crew had not been so lucky. As far as anyone could tell, he was the only survivor. Himself and two alien creatures that Reyes and Morrison had killed when they rendezvoused with the distressed ship.

Hanzo had experienced a similar attack. His parents had been scientists on a planet—he never specified which, and nobody talked about it—that had been invaded by similar creatures to those that had attacked the  _ Skeld _ . There had been more survivors, then—Hanzo, his father, the base engineer.

So many more had died, though. Hanzo’s younger brother, Genji, had been one of them. Hanzo had been in the right place at the right time—or the wrong place, depending on your point of view. He had been fixing wiring and when he turned around, he found the creature, masquerading as a human, standing over his brother’s body.

The rest of their dwindling crew had banded together, had hunted it down, and cast it into the lava of a small caldera that the crew had been studying. Revenge had been bittersweet, and Hanzo had once admitted to McCree that he thought his father blamed him for Genji’s death. They would never know the truth, though, as the man was long dead.

McCree knew Hanzo still had nightmares about it, though. That shit stayed with you.

It was how they had bonded initially. A dark cloud hung over their heads; everyone whispered about them. The Survivors. McCree as a child, Hanzo as an adolescent.

They were a rare breed. Not many survived attacks by the creatures that spacefarers were beginning to call Imposters. They masqueraded as people, sometimes seamlessly. It didn’t help that the places that the Imposters tended to inhabit required humans to wear spacesuits, so nobody could see that the body inside the suit wasn’t human anymore.

_ That sucks _ , he said.

_ You too _ , Hanzo replied immediately.  _ I dreamt that it was you this time, not Genji _ .

That made something warm bloom in his chest. McCree smiled.  _ I don’t intend to die, _ he said.

_ Neither did Genji. Or your parents. _

McCree made a face.  _ How about this, _ he proposed.  _ You and I pair up tomorrow. Or later today, I guess. We can get our tasks done together _ .

A long pause. McCree hoped Hanzo had gone to sleep but knew that he hadn’t. He knew that he was nervous, that he was stuck in that time loop again where he relived Genji’s death.

That was why they had been together, after all. Hanzo’s father had wanted them to stick together so that they could protect each other.

And Genji had died.

From other stories that McCree had heard about Imposter encounters, other crews had turned on each other. Paranoia had run rampant; nobody knew who was safe, who was an Imposter. Sometimes, Imposters hadn’t killed anyone—they had done it to each other, airlocking their own family, friends, crewmates, or throwing them in a pit or crevasses or lava.

Hanzo had almost had that fate. The dwindling crew had tried to say that it had been Hanzo that had killed his brother, that Hanzo had been killed by an Imposter. They had been so close to throwing him into the lava that later was used to kill the real Imposter.

And now, though he had meant well, McCree had made him relive that all in the blink of an eye.

_ I’d like that _ , Hanzo said, and McCree smiled.

* * *

_ The box was pulled away. _

_ A featureless helmet stared back. Its visor was down so that all he could see was his own reflection, cowering in the corner. _

_ It wasn’t a gloved hand that reached for him, but a writhing mass of purplish flesh that only vaguely resembled a human hand. The Imposter’s glove had been ripped, or maybe burned, or maybe just cast aside now that the crew, everyone save for McCree, was dead. _

_ He could see its shiny, mottled flesh, its too many fingers, its too sharp claws. _

_ Even through the many layers of his suit he could feel its touch. It was so cold it was hot; it was like his underwater training, where he could feel the water pressing on the seams of the suits to get in, to get him. _

_ The touch was wet with blood, left streaks that blended in with his red suit. _

_ Or was it yellow? _

_ The colors seemed to shift, moving back and forth: yellow, orange, red. _

_ He could see the Imposter now. There was a crack in the helmet through which a thin thread tipped with a jagged, triangular blade wiggled out. It moved as if it could see him, arching up and wobbling as a terrible sound and a terrible smell came through the cracks in the Imposter’s visor. _

_ Then it spoke in a voice that was not a voice, but he could still hear it. It was clicks and whistles and gurgles and moans; it was a bone-rattling hum that was not human speech, but he could still understand it.  _ **_My Own_ ** _. _

* * *

McCree sat up again and wiped his brow, scrubbed two hands over his face.

That’s what he got for going back to sleep, he supposed. One dream always led to another, and another. If he kept going back to sleep, he’d have nightmares all night long.

Fortunately, it was time to wake up, or close enough. McCree reached over and turned off the alarm before moving into the wash racks attached to his room to get ready for the day.

It was the plus side of being a celebrity, even one as unlucky as they were (as Hanzo also shared this dubious honor)—they were given private suites, private wash racks. McCree would give up privacy in a heartbeat if only he could have Hanzo with him.

He sighed, pressing his face against the smooth wall of the wash racks. Intimacy in space was… lacking. They said that nobody was sure of what would happen to a baby in space, what kind of yuckiness that could be caught but not detected. How long had humans been in space and yet they still weren’t sure?

Perhaps it was just the nature of their missions. Their crews were always going to uncharted territory, experiencing worlds—and bacteria, viruses, pathogens—that were unfamiliar to humans. Perhaps other humans among the stars were able to be close with their teammates, with their friends and family and loved ones.

Or perhaps they were scientists as well as guinea pigs, to use an archaic term. That would explain why there were scientists and crewmates of all ages on these trips. If these children could make the trip and survive such inhospitable environments, then perhaps they would pave the way for others.

For families.

Just his fucking luck that he would finally find someone worth his time, someone that understood why he’d wake up screaming in the middle of the night, and they all had to remain fucking quarantined. Always in their suits, always alone in their rooms.

Every once in a while, he remembered why he hated this mission so much. It’d been a year already and he didn’t even know what Hanzo looked like, just that he was pretty sure that he loved him.

He was pretty sure that Hanzo cared deeply for him as well.

Well, the quicker they got their information from their new base, the better. McCree hurried to clean up, carefully threading legs and arms into the heavy suit and sealing himself inside with a heavy sigh.

He traced his face in the mirror, unable to see past the reflective visor. Shaking his head—invisible in the enormous marshmallow suit—he stomped outside and tried not to think of how his footsteps sounded like those in his dream.

* * *

The scientists fucked up on the planet’s readings. They droned on and on about unreliable data, on something-or-other storms and something-something-something in the air that fucked up their comm systems. Base-wide communications was impossible, except for very short data-bursts and, even then, it took a ridiculous amount of power.

He was only half-listening when the commander explained that the base-wide communications was  _ only _ for emergencies. If they were close enough, they could speak on their short-wave radios (or something, McCree wasn’t listening) but further away, nobody could hear anything.

_ In space, nobody can hear your scream _ , the commander said with an awkward little laugh that nobody else returned. 

He looked at Hanzo who gently nudged his arm with the back of his fist. Behind his visor, McCree smiled. 

* * *

They both had tasks in the greenhouse so they walked that way, talking to each other about nonsensical things. About the reason they were there, about rocks and leaves and plants. Hanzo talked about his studies in advanced mathematics, but McCree couldn’t keep up. 

Still, it was nice to hear his voice. Even if it kept cutting out in bursts of static. 

Suddenly, Hanzo cursed. “I can’t see,” he hissed. 

It was like his dream all over again. The shadows were longer, the silence more deafening. 

That same metallic click of a grate, that same wet crack, the thump like a puppet whose strings had been cut. 

Not even a day at Mira and already there was an Imposter. Or had it been here all along? 

He backed up, putting Hanzo behind him as he tried to find the creature. Had it taken on a human form yet? He could feel Hanzo shivering behind him. This must be terrible for him, the memories far newer for him than they were for McCree. 

Then there was that sound, that speech-that-was-not, that echo in his bones.  **Our Own** . 

Another loud clank of the metal grate. Then the lights slowly came on. He and Hanzo crept, perhaps stupidly, toward the grate. Around the corner was a body. 

Bending, McCree picked up the body’s nametag and grimly showed it to Hanzo. With a sigh, they sent out a databurst. 

_ Murphy is dead. Imposter on the loose _ . 

* * *

As the people that found the body suspicion first fell to them, but Gina vouched for them. 

O’Brien was killed next, but McCree wasn’t there. Hanzo was terrified, and at some point their hands tangled together. He wished that he could enjoy the moment. 

He wished that there was any guarantee that any of them would get out of there alive. There was no guarantee that they would get back to habitable space. 

“Keep doing your tasks,” the commander said, and McCree held Hanzo closer. He saw a few others doing the same. “Stay together.”

McCree pulled Hanzo into a secluded corner of the base and pressed his visor against Hanzo’s. “I think I love you,” he whispered. 

“I love you too,” Hanzo whispered among the crackling static. 

The vents creaked again. “Run,” McCree whispered. “I’ll be right behind you.” 

**Our Own,** the not-voice cried, and something tackled him from behind. 

* * *

_ An Imposter held him. _

_ It put him into his red space suit and sealed him inside. It put him in the room where Reyes and Morrison would later find him, hid him beneath an old desk and shoved storage boxes in front of it to block the way.  _

_ “Stay here,” it said in a human’s voice and left.  _

_ An indeterminable amount of time later he heard yells. “We got the Imposter!” Someone called that there may be more, but the celebrations drowned those voices out.  _

_ Hidden, forgotten, McCree cried alone and frightened. _

* * *

When McCree woke, his helmet was cracked. A thick chunk was missing and he could see the world clearly through it. He wasn’t sure he liked how bright the lights and colors were. 

The Imposter stood in front of him, distinguishable only because of the way it crouched in front of him and the way its body moved strangely beneath its suit.  **Our Own,** it said. 

McCree grabbed something nearby—he didn’t know what—and slammed it into its visor, causing it to shatter. He took a brief look at whatever was inside but could only see a terrible, seething mass of red and too many eyes, too many teeth. 

He ran into Hanzo again, coming back with the rest of the survivors. They nearly shot him, rightfully terrified that he was an Imposter; their tune changed when the actual Imposter came sprinting down the hall after him. 

There was no trial, no jury; they threw the Imposter into the incinerator, and McCree tried to ignore its bone-rattling shrieks as it died. 

Afterwards, Hanzo drew them both to McCree’s room and hugged him tightly. “I was so afraid,” he whispered. 

McCree gripped Hanzo’s helmet between both hands and pressed his visor to Hanzo’s. “I was too,” he agreed. 

“I thought that I had lost you. Did you… mean it? Earlier?” 

Hanzo gripped McCree’s suit but wouldn’t look at him. McCree realized that it was because he was terrified that McCree really was dead and that the person in front of him was an Imposter. He hugged Hanzo tightly. “I said that I thought I loved you,” he said. “I lied. I know that I love you. More than anything.” 

He held Hanzo as he sobbed and drew him to his large bed where they both stretched out and lay there together. They were tears of relief, of joy. When Hanzo’s visor bumped against McCree’s, Hanzo huffed, half laughing, half frustrated. 

“Take this off,” he said roughly, pawing at the fastenings of his helmet. “I need to see you.” 

“Quarantine,” McCree protested weakly, even as he fumbled with the latches. 

Cursing breathlessly, Hanzo ripped his heavy gloves off and McCree froze at the sight of his hands. They undid the latches of his helmet and paused as well. 

“Jesse,” Hanzo said softly. “How did we meet?” 

McCree swallowed. Hanzo rarely called him that, and he was the only one that ever did. “I saw you struggling to reach something on the top shelf,” he remembered. “And I caught you when you fell off the stool.” 

“But only because you scared me,” Hanzo whispered. 

Slowly, McCree lifted Hanzo’s hands up where he could see them, where he could trace the fingers with his thick gloves; his neck, where visible by the edges of his helmet, felt too exposed beneath Hanzo’s gaze.

“Jesse,” Hanzo breathed. Slowly, he pulled his hands away from McCree but didn’t move from where he had straddled McCree’s lap. His bare hands, so alien to McCree and yet somehow familiar, opened the latches of his helmet, unbuckling the heavy fasteners around his collar. 

The suit hissed and McCree realized that he was holding his breath and didn’t know why. 

Slowly, Hanzo pulled his helmet off. Long strands of black thread cascaded out of it, shimmering in the light. It reminded McCree of the times that he had snuck into Morrison’s craft room and found the shimmering spools of satin thread. He had never known how anyone could do such delicate needlework in such awkward, bulky gloves. 

Then skin. Smooth skin. Not fissured, not wet; just smooth, pale skin. 

A smooth, flat face with a peak jutting out—a nose—and only two brown eyes in a sea of white. He had one mouth that did not stretch across his face and slowly, McCree lifted his gloved hand to cup Hanzo’s face. 

A face that looked nothing like his. 

There was an expression on his face that McCree couldn’t read. He realized that he had never seen what other humans looked like beneath their helmets. All workers wore their suits at the Edge, and he had always lived away from habitable space. Even Reyes and Morrison, who had raised him after rescuing him from the  _ Skeld _ , hadn’t ever taken their helmets off. 

_ Quarantine _ , McCree realized, his throat tight.  _ Only  _ I _ hadn’t been quarantined,  _ they _ had been quarantining themselves from  _ me.

Hanzo caught one of his gloves in both of his hands and unbuckled them, pulling them off of a hand that looked nothing like his. He realized that Hanzo’s hands were trembling but he couldn’t offer any kind of comfort. 

Swallowing hard, Hanzo tangled his five fingers—four fingers and a thumb—around McCree’s seven fingers. He shook, but McCree couldn’t blame him, knowing that an Imposter had killed his brother. 

And here was another. 

One that had fallen in love with him; one that  _ he _ had fallen in love with. 

Hanzo untangled their hands and pulled off his other glove before slowly resting his hands on the sides of McCree’s helm. He didn’t resist when Hanzo slowly pulled it off and tossed it aside. He heard a crash as the visor shattered, already weakened by whatever had cracked it. 

There was water in Hanzo’s eyes, dripping down his cheeks. McCree held still as Hanzo traced his features, touching the wet fissures of his skin, his teeth (too many, in a mouth too wide compared to Hanzo’s), his eyes (too many compared to Hanzo’s). 

“Of course,” he said, his voice cracking. He swallowed audibly. “Did you…” 

“I…” McCree tried but couldn’t finish his sentence. He swallowed and Hanzo’s eyes followed the motion. “I don’t know. I… I  _ didn’t _ know.” 

So many things made sense to him now. So many things that he had brushed off, had disregarded, suddenly clicked. 

He was always bunked alone—but he had thought that everyone on the ship had their own room. How many times had he looked at the “PRIVATE QUARTERS” section of the map, where his room was, and at the “BARRACKS”. 

He had never seen the faces of Reyes and Morrison, even in all the years he had known them. They were always wrapped up in their spacesuits— _ to protect themselves from him _ . 

_ Stars _ , he felt so stupid. How could he not have realized? How could he have deluded himself into thinking that he was human? That humans had four arms even though their suits had two? That humans had seven fingers even though their gloves had five? 

“Let’s just…” Hanzo swallowed. He climbed off of McCree and, instead of running away like McCree expected, began unfastening his spacesuit. Hanzo wore a simple jumpsuit underneath, stained with sweat. “I need a nap,” he said. “I think… you do too.”

“Maybe when we wake up,” McCree said slowly, standing and pulling off his own suit, watching Hanzo in case he decided to run away. “Maybe it’ll all make sense.” 

Hanzo swallowed and nodded, but he climbed readily enough into bed and curled quickly enough against McCree’s side as if they were both human. With Hanzo’s small human heart thrumming against his chest, McCree closed his eyes and fell asleep.

* * *

**_My Own,_ ** _ the Imposter said as it coaxed him into an empty spacesuit. The human child that it belonged to was long dead.  _ **_My Own,_ ** _ it said again, hiding him where he would not be found. It took the body of the child with it and he was left alone.  _

_ He heard footsteps, heard the Imposter killing humans, heard their bodies drop.  _

_ He heard Reyes and Morrison arrive at the derelict ship, heard them walk down the halls.  _

_ It had not been an Imposter that had drawn him from beneath the desk, but Reyes and Morrison trying to save what they had thought was an abandoned child. He heard the scream of the Imposter as they killed it.  _

**_Our Own,_ ** _ the Imposter at Mira had called him. A name? Or just acknowledgement that he was one of them _ — _ that _ he _ was an Imposter, too. _

_ Then his memories turned to dreams of Hanzo hunting him down and throwing him in the incinerator.  _

* * *

He woke up with Hanzo in his arms; Hanzo’s two human eyes were open, and he was staring at him with a softness that threatened to choke McCree. 

“I’m still here,” Hanzo said, sounding as surprised as McCree felt. “And… I still love you.” He kissed the corner of McCree’s big, tooth-filled mouth. 

The vent creaked suddenly and McCree spread himself over Hanzo, hissing at the Imposter who climbed in. 

**Our Own,** it said, but three of its eyes were on Hanzo. 

“ _ Mine, _ ” McCree hissed, and the Imposter leaped. 

* * *

McCree sat beside Hanzo, staring up into the sky. 

The Mira base was silent without the sounds of inhabitants—human or otherwise. The ship was sabotaged, the crew dead. 

All except for Hanzo and McCree. 

Hanzo touched McCree, flinching before settling more firmly on McCree’s thigh, swaddled in his red spacesuit. “I’m sorry,” he said. 

“I am an Imposter,” McCree said a little bitterly. He wondered if he’d ever fully come to grips with the knowledge that his adopted parents had lied so thoroughly to him. “And someone like me killed your brother. You’re allowed to be afraid of me.” 

“And I love you,” Hanzo said. “I love the man I know. I just… need to get used to the rest of him.” 

McCree laughed bitterly. The two moons began to rise in the sky; in the distance, he could see the beginnings of a storm. “They’re going to come back, you know.”  _ And they will kill me, because I am an Imposter. _

“I don’t think they will,” Hanzo said. “As far as they’re aware, everyone is dead. An Imposter has no reason to stick around.” 

McCree grunted. “Is it worth it?” 

Hanzo turned his helmet to face McCree’s. The atmosphere was inhospitable to humans, and McCree hated to see his own distorted reflection in his visor. “It is,” Hanzo said. “It will be. I have nothing there.” 

All he had left was space, Hanzo had once told him. His mother had died when he was young, his brother had been killed by an Imposter, and his father had died of radiation sickness on another base. He had nobody. 

Nobody but McCree. 

“And here?” McCree asked. “There are only Imposters here.” 

In the distance, they could hear the bone-rattling wail of other Imposters. 

“And,” Hanzo said softly. “The man I love.” he stood and offered a hand to McCree. “Come on. We have some cleaning up to do.” 

Standing, McCree cupped Hanzo’s visor. “I love you,” he said softly. 

Hanzo bumped his visor against McCree’s. “I love you too.” The words came easy, without hesitation.

McCree smiled. 

**Author's Note:**

> The reason that I am posting this here is because there _will_ be more. We haven't even gotten to the ice cream incident yet. 
> 
> In any event, I hope you enjoyed it. I had a lot of fun with this and I can't wait to write more for it. 
> 
> Feel free to come and yell at me on Twitter at [Dracoduceus](https://twitter.com/dracoduceus). 
> 
> ~DC


End file.
